Is the US headed for recession?

You wouldn't think it to look at the US stock market, but an ongoing housing slump and rising petrol prices mean that there's a very real chance of the US slipping into recession by the end of the year.

You wouldn't think it to look at the US stock market - or global markets for that matter.

But there's a very real chance that the US will be in recession before the year is out. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan puts the odds at one in three - and he should know; as Robin Aspinall of Halkin Services points out, "it's his recession".

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.